Second ‘Sabotaged’ Ship Bows Out of Flotilla

Irish ship MV Saoirse won’t sail after divers found one of the propeller shafts was damaged. Israel blamed.

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Gil Ronen, 30/06/11 11:09 | updated: 11:06

Flotilla protest in Ireland.

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An Irish ship, the MV Saoirse, will not take part in the planned flotilla in support of the murderous and rapacious Hamas regime in Gaza. The ship has been sabotaged, according to one of its intended passengers.

Speaking with the Irish Times last night from the Turkish port of Göcek, Fintan Lane of Irish Ship to Gaza organization said that the ship could not sail because it had been “dangerously sabotaged.”

He said that the ship’s captain noticed that there was something wrong with it Monday. Divers subsequently found that a piece was missing from one of the propeller shafts.

“This was the type of sabotage that endangered human life,” Lane told the Times. “They put divers under the boat who cut a piece out of the propeller shaft. That means that the damage would have happened gradually and what would have happened eventually is that the propeller would have come up through the bottom of the boat, caused a flood in the engine room and would have caused the boat to sink.”

Six of the 20-plus crew who had been due to set sail on the boat intend to join an Italian-based vessel instead. These include Lane, former Ireland rugby player Trevor Hogan, Socialist Party MEP Paul Murphy, Libyan-born Irish citizen Hussein Hamed and Derry-based Sinn Féin councilor Gerry MacLochlainn.

Lane said the damage to the ship was similar to that caused to the Swedish ship the Juliano, which flotilla organizers claim was sabotaged in the Greek port of Piraeus by “hostile divers.”

There are eight other vessels that plan to sail to Gaza in the flotilla, which claims to be humanitarian in its outlook but which, in fact, supports the right of Hamas child-killers to import arms without Israeli interference.

According to the organizers, the Italian ship Stefano Chiarim will carry the most passengers with 65 people; Canadian ship Tahrir will carry 48 passengers and an American vessel, which is currently detained in Greece, will carry 40 passengers.

An additional five ships are expected to depart from Spain, France, Greece, Sweden and Norway. Organizers expect 292 participants and 36 members of the press.